IPL and World T20 telecast. Jeno kaam teno thaay...

There is a Gujarati proverb that says 'Jeno kaam teno thaay'. Simply put, it says one should do take up only those tasks that one can. This might sound like rather pessimistic and is likely to be looked down upon by motivational speakers. After all - they always tell people that human potential is unlimited and if you plan right, then anything is possible.
I am sorry to inform them - anything is NOT possible.
OK, I am referring to the program that is aired on ESPN/Star as part of their telecast of World T20. It is anchored by Cyrus Broacha and Shonali Nagrani. (Shonali who? Never mind.... read on if you wish.) After the recently concluded IPL T20 tamasha, this show is a let-down. It comes nowhere close.

To be fair to them, one expects the telecast to be at least as good as the recent IPL telecast, if not better. And that is a big expectation. IPL and Set Max together pulled out all stops to make sure that the telecast of T20 matches was what it should be. Entertainment for three hours. Even the cricket purists and pundits all agree that T20 is more about viewer entertainment and less about cricket. No opportunity for branding was lost. Sixes became DLF maximum, catches became Karbonn Kamaal, wickets became Citi moment of success. I think that by the time we see IPL4, the outswinger, inswinger, doosra and the googly will also get branded separately.
Samir Kocchar, Gaurav Kapur, Ayushman Khurana and Angad Bedi may not be highly knowledgeable about cricket. They may not be classy TV hosts too. But they carried it off surely. Maybe they were also aided by the glitz and glamour of IPL. So what if Preity Zinta often looked like a jack-in-the-box in the dug-out. So what if Shilpa Shetty often shrieked like a banshee. It all added up to be good entertainment.
The World T20 may be a bigger tournament in terms of prestige of representing one's country. But the telecast is a damp squib, to say the least. To start with, Cyrus doesn't let anyone else talk. Someone needs to remind him that this is not CNN-IBN's satirical news show that he hosts. As a result, I don't yet know how good Shonali is at talking!

Needless to say, Shonali is left with hardly anything to do. As for the experts (Wasim Akram, Jason Gillespie and others) they can do little else than look on bemusedly as Cyrus goes on and on.
Maybe its a good thing that the matches are at 6 and 11 pm. So people are either still in office or going off to bed. Only hardcore cricket addicts must be sitting up late at night. I am sure that most of them must be surfing other channels while this show is on and coming back only when the first ball is being bowled.
A cricket show is not Cyrus Broacha's arena. I don't know if Cyrus has learnt Gujarati. But it do the show a lot of good if he does. Jeno kaam teno thaay....